


at heart, always

by marginaliana



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: What Luna has learned by the end of the war is: snorckacks are fascinating and thestrals are beautiful, but humans are the wildest, strangest, most vulnerable animals of all.





	at heart, always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Sank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/gifts).

What Luna has learned by the end of the war is: snorckacks are fascinating and thestrals are beautiful, but humans are the wildest, strangest, most vulnerable animals of all. 

Part of her wants to disappear, to fade away into a distant land, to befriend trees and toadstools and turkinglet vultures. Part of her wants to run from everything she's known, because what has Britain given her, what has Hogwarts given her, apart from grief and pain?

_Friends_, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. _Good friends._

They _were_ good ones, that was the miraculous thing. Thoughtless and awkward and funny and brave and smart and kind. At heart, always, they were kind. There was a point when having friends was all Luna wanted; if any of the Ravenclaws had shown her an inch of kindness that first year, she might have been pathetically eager for the validation. She might have become anyone's follower. She might have become her own monster. Instead she was lucky enough to get this.

That vision of her maybe-self is, in the end, why she stays. There will be others like her, others in entirely different sorts of pain. There will be some who aren't loved and some who make terrible mistakes, there will be some who have words inside that they can't get out, and some who are afraid, and some who simply miss their mothers.

"The school needs a healer," she tells McGongall. The Great Hall has mostly been repaired and is half-full of people eating; the bodies are long since gone. Yet somehow inside Luna's chest the stones are still cracked, the air is still grey and silent. Hogwarts will be scarred for a long time. They all will be. "For the heart."

(They call it 'mind-healing,' in the Saint Mungo's program, but Luna thinks that 'mind' is too small a word for what needs to be healed.)

She expects an argument, expects to be told she's the wrong person, expects to have to argue that it's _because_ she's the wrong person that she's the _right_ person. But instead McGonagall gives her a very precise look and says, "Yes. Yes, I see. Not yet, you're too close to them. Go and get your degree, Miss Lovegood. I'll look for someone in the meantime, but when you're ready you may come back and speak to me."

Luna curtsies, just because she likes the way it feels, but it makes a smile twitch at the corner of McGonagall's mouth. Something blossoms in Luna's heart, a little healing of her own. She can give this bit of happiness – small and odd as it may be – and that's the other reason why, in the end, she'll stay.


End file.
